It’s funny, iPhone tutorials often don’t talk about typing, yet it’s the bedrock
of pretty much everything you do on your iPhone.
So, in this video, we’re just going to talk about typing, specifically some tips and tricks
to help you type more easily, more accurately, and faster.
Stick with me until the end of this video, while some of these features have been around
for a while, I reckon there’s at least a couple that most people won’t know about.
OK, let’s get into it.
So the first tip is all about ensuring that the keyboard that you’re using is comfortable
for you, and you can do that by pressing and holding this emoji icon in the bottom left
for a moment, until it brings up this menu.
Now the keyboard in the centre, that’s the standard keyboard, designed for use with both
hands on the phone, but you might prefer to type one-handed, and if that’s the case
for you, choose the relevant left hand only, or right hand only keyboard.
Notice that it bunches the keys together, bringing them closer to whichever hand you’ve
selected.
The point of this of course is that you’ve now got much less travel between the keys,
and it genuinely does make it easier to type with one thumb using this keyboard method.
Repeat the process to return back to normal.
Sticking with that menu for a moment, let me show you a tip that’s useful if you often
find yourself typing in different languages.
If we tap and hold here again, and then choose Keyboard Settings, then tap on Keyboards,
we can add in a different keyboard from the various ones available here.
Notice that the button has now changed from an emoji icon to a globe icon.
Now, if I tap and hold here, I can quickly jump between the different language keyboards
that I’ve got selected.
Also notice that the emoji keyboard is still available, it’s just here next to the numbers
button now.
Another tip that’s useful for those who have to type in different languages, you can
access accents and special characters, by tapping and holding the relevant letter.
So, if I tap and hold on the letter ‘e’ for example, you can see all of the different
options appear above it, and I just move my finger left and right to select the one that
I want.
This is of course only going to work on the characters that this is relevant to, but it’s
a great tip for anyone who often has to type in different languages.
And, this extends to special symbols also.
So if I tap on the number button down here, that takes me through to the special characters
part of the keyboard, and then if I press and hold on the question mark sign for example,
or the exclamation mark, or the zero number which gives me degrees, or the pound sign
which gives me a bunch of other currency options.
I’m including these two tips together because they are extremely fundamental tips that I
reckon most people will know, but I wanted to take a few seconds to cover them just in
case.
When you’re done typing a sentence, you don’t need to tap the period or full stop
button, just double-tap the space bar.
And I’m sure you know that this is your shift button, and if you tap it once you can
then create a capitalised letter, and then the keyboard will immediately go back to non-capitalised
text, but if you double tap on the shift button, you enter Caps Lock mode, and then anything
you type from that point on will be all capitals, and you simply tap the button once to come
back out of caps lock mode.
Oh, and I don’t know who needs to know this, but when you type in all caps lock, that’s
considered shouting in text speak, so unless you’re trying to come across as shouty and
angry when you’re typing, avoid all caps.
Let’s quickly talk some gestures that you can use to help you when typing.
First up, if you make a mistake while typing, just give your iPhone a little shake.
This acts as an ‘undo’ feature, and will undo whatever you just did.
There is also a three finger gesture for this, you use three fingers and swipe left on the
screen, that will also act as an undo.
Swiping right with three fingers acts as a redo.
Tapping once on the keyboard will position the cursor.
Tapping twice will select the closest word to the cursor, tapping three times will select
the closest line.
You’ve then got all these options in this context menu above, including things like
making text bold or italic.
You’ve also got Cut, Copy and Paste here, but there are also 3 finger gestures for these
too.
If you pinch with three fingers, that’s copy.
Then push out like this with 3 fingers to paste.
Oh, and check this out, let me grab my iPad.
I’ve just used three finger pinch to copy from my iPhone, but I can then use three finger
push to paste what I copied to my iPad.
Clever right?
One of the biggest complaints I hear from people when typing on their iPhone is when
they mess up, and then find it difficult to get back to their mistake to fix it, they
usually just prod and poke at the screen to try and move the cursor.
The easiest way to fix this is to press and hold your spacebar, which then allows you
to move your cursor around the screen like a trackpad on a laptop.
You can move up and down, left and right, and you can really do this with pretty remarkable
accuracy.
There’s a shortcut to help you type out web addresses and email addresses more quickly,
although this only works in fields where the phone is expecting you to input an email address
or a web address, so for example the To field in an email, or the address bar in your browser
of choice.
Just tap and hold the full stop button, and you’ll get a list of many of the most common
suffixes, and you can just move your thumb or finger across to select the one that you
want.
Your phone has a swipe keyboard built into it, as an alternative to tapping on each letter.
It takes a tiny bit of practice, but it’s surprisingly accurate.
You just start by gently pressing down on your starting letter, and then without taking
your thumb or finger off of the keyboard, you swipe to each followup letter to make
up your word, like I’m doing on the screen now.
Your iPhone is able to figure out the word you’re trying to create by the movement
between the different letters.
When you take your finger off of the keyboard at the end of the word, the phone recognises
that you want to input a space, so you can then just get on with swiping for the next
word.
I think this would be most useful for people using the one handed keyboard tip that I mentioned
earlier on, perhaps on public transport where you might only have one hand available to
you, as it is easier than tapping out each letter, once you get the hang of it.
Let’s be honest, the only thing better than learning a load of typing hacks to help you
type more quickly and accurately, is to use dictation so that you don’t have to type
at all!
Dictation on iPhone, iPad and Mac all works surprisingly well, but you need to remember
that you’ll need to add a little bit on to the end of each line, to help input things
like punctuation.
Let me show you.
This is an example of me using the dictation tool on my iPhone - full stop.
It’s an extremely effective way of inputting text - comma - and once you get the hang of
it - comma - you can get your thoughts onto your phone with ease - full stop - new line.
I really like using it - comma - and I think you will too - full stop.
There’s a feature in your iPhone called text replacement, whereby typing something
on your keyboard will trigger your iPhone to replace it with a predefined text element.
Let me show you.
Tap and hold down here in the bottom left to get access to the Keyboard Settings.
Then choose Text Replacement.
You can see I’ve already got one setup.
If it type the letters o-m-w like you see here, my device will automatically change
it to On my way!
Let’s add a new one.
First, choose the phrase that you’d like to have input for you.
You can be pretty detailed here, in fact let’s put in a fake address to show you this.
Unfortunately, you can’t input return lines, and if you paste in from somewhere else, they
get removed, which is a shame, hopefully Apple could change this.
You then need to decide on the shortcut.
The trick here is to choose something that’s easy to type, that you wouldn’t end up typing
by mistake.
So I might put ‘myadd’ because I’m not going to accidentally type that, it’s not
a real word, but it’s also easy to type and easy to remember.
And if I jump back to the note, I can show you how this works.
Impressive right?
You could do this for all manner of things that you have to type out frequently, from
addresses, to phone numbers, to sign-offs on messages, and if you’ve got multiple
Apple items like maybe an iPad or a Mac, all signed into the same Apple account, this will
then work across all of them.
So there you go, 10 tips to help you master the iPhone keyboard.
We’re only a month or so away from WWDC, so I’m hoping Apple might add some new keyboard
improvement in iOS16.
What about you, what improvements or changes would you like to see?
Drop me a comment, and let’s talk about it.
And as ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving me a like, and
subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future.
See you on the next video.